Drained
by Unique .F
Summary: She found him. Two days later, as still as the dead, as cold as ice. Drained. Magicless. Worse than dead.
1. Chapter 1

Two days later, she found him. As still as the dead, as cold as ice.

It was Sunday, when she had been walking Merlin, cheerful and happy. Two nights before-Friday-, she'd run the Labyrinth and defeated it's King. Two nights before-Friday-she'd had her victory party. Two nights before-Friday-, the king had gone missing. _As still as the dead, as cold as ice._

Many believed he was sulking after his defeat at the hands of a mere mortal girl. Many believed he was recuperating his power, ready to begin rebuilding the Escher Room and the other parts of the Labyrinth that had been damaged. But dead? Lost? No, never, not the Goblin King. _As still as the dead, as cold as ice._

But yet, a whole two days later, he was still gone. Vanished off the face of both alternate realities. Gone. No clues, no goodbyes, just gone.

Sarah had admitted to seeing him fly off into the moonlight after her party, a ghost, a speck, a flitter across the moon. That was all they had to go on.

In the meantime, Sarah had been elected by Jareth's officers to continue temporarily in his place, as the Labyrinth had accepted her as it's Champion. The bridge was rebuilt, but no one could fix the Escher Room. The army was thrown into concentrated training to remedy their awful attack, but no one could fix the ballroom. The Goblin City was beginning to be rebuilt, but no one could help the weeping Labyrinth. No one could find the king. _As still as the dead, as cold as ice._

Sarah was walking, Merlin at her side, deep in thought, the morning she'd found him. _As still as the dead, as cold as ice._ The Labyrinth obeyed her, obeyed her like it had obeyed the lost king. But Sarah was not magic. She was not it's ruler. She could not fix, only patch.

She was thinking on ways to reduce, if not completely get rid of the Junk land outside the Goblin City. Sarah ambled down the path, subconsciously going to the park she had so often visited, before the Labyrinth, before it's missing ruler. _As still as the dead, as cold as ice. _She wore simple clothes, blue jeans and greyish purple trainers, with one of those white poet shirts and a purple jumper thrown on top. Her hair, ramrod straight, hung down her back in a glossy waterfall. 

_Maybe we could build a huge bonfire, _she thought to herself, chuckling at the likely reaction of the Junk ladies.

She crossed the stone bridge. Merlin's feet clacked on the stone behind her as he automatically went to his bench. This time, Sarah followed him, glancing up, as she always did, _just to check,_ at the stone column. There they sat, calm, quiet. The only noise was the wind sighing through the grass and their breathing, which appeared unnaturally loud in the peaceful calm. The babble of the river as it swirled past. The cry of some bird taking wing. A car, whooshing down the street. A yelled voice.

Peaceful.

_If only I could forget, for one moment, _Sarah thought ruefully. _But I never can. There's always something needing to be done...Fix that crumbling wall. Find that lost key. Help those homeless goblins. Return that chicken. Sort out that argument. _She buried her face in her hands. _I'm not cut out for ruling the Labyrinth, if only temporarily. I never have any me time anymore. Juggling homework, school, friends and Labyrinth, like he used to juggle crystals..._

"Stop it!" Sarah slapped herself. Merlin whined and looked up at her. _Stop thinking about him. He's gone. _

_Is he really? _A sneaking voice asked her.

_Yes, _Sarah snapped back.

The voice was silent.

Merlin whined again and jumped off the bench. Jolted out of her internal debate, Sarah looked up. The sheepdog was sniffing around the flowers near the bridge. He gave a curious sounding yip and disappeared underneath it.

"Merlin!" Sarah huffed. "Now you're all wet."

She started after the dog, intending to call him back and take him home, hopefully to dry off before her step mother Karen and father Robert came back. However, just then she heard a long, low moan.

Sarah froze. The sound had come from under the bridge. Merlin bounded into view, wagging his tail excitedly and barking.

Rushing forward, Sarah splashed into the river and peered under the bridge.

There he lay, as still as the dead, as cold as ice. He was soaked through, still wearing the same billowing white clothes from the Escher room. His body was submerged in water, his arm snared by a lodged stick. His head had flopped against his shoulder, just above the water. His hair was limp and bedraggled. She could see bones sticking through his cheeks. His glittery eye brows were faded and dull. His eyes were half open, hazy and glazed. His clothes were absoloutley soaked, ruined by the immersion, matted with mud and weed. They eddied around him, dead weights around the flaccid limbs.

Utterly still. If it hadn't been for the trembling, pitifully weak moan that escaped his colourless lips, she'd have thought him dead.

Dead. Gone. Forever.

She hurried to his side, muttering in a low voice, "If this is a trap, I _will _find some time to stab you later." She cupped his face, stroking his cheek gently. The lax King did not respond.

Sarah checked for a pulse. It was there, faint, fluttering like a newborn chick's. Barely noticeable. He was as cold as ice.

The fifteen year old attempted to gather him in her arms, but when she very nearly dropped him back into the stream, settled for hauling him onto the bank.

_He's not going to live. No one could. Two days and nights spent immersed in freezing cold water? _

_But he's the Goblin King. _

_He's as still as the dead, as cold as ice._

_But he's the Goblin King._

"Jareth? Goblin King?"

Nothing, not even the faintest twitch of an eyelid. His breathing was getting steadily fainter. His heart fluttered like a dying bird's underneath her fingertips as they frantically roamed his cold face and neck.

"Oh god, don't die on me! What would the neighbours say?" Sarah snapped, slapping him hard.

She was frightened, so frightened of this man, what he'd done, what he could do. And she was terrified that he would die, terrified she'd be left-

"I have to get you back!" Sarah cried. "But how!"

_His clothes!_

Ripping out her penknife, a present from her father that she'd recently taken to carrying round with her, Sarah began to hack at the sodden, dead weight clothing enshrouding the Goblin King. It was soggy and refused to cut neatly, especially the swan feather cape, but Sarah was not interested in how they ended up. She was more fussed about keeping the very close to death man from dying.

Once she had reduced his attire to shorts and a shirt, she shoved the penknife back in her pocket. Gathering Jareth close to her chest, she struggled to rise with the extra weight. Finally she flung him over her shoulder, fireman style, and legged it out of the park.

Merlin followed her, barking excitedly. Sarah payed no heed to exclamations from her neighbours as she raced towards her house. She dropped her shoulder and barged into the door. It crashed open into Toby's quickly hired babysitter, Ludo.

"LUDO! WARM CLOTHES, NOW!" Sarah yelled, lugging the King up the stairs to the bathroom as fast as she could.

As soon as she had reached that doubtful sanctuary, she dropped the unconscious Jareth into the tub and turned the hot tap on full blast. Sarah wasn't quite brave enough to remove the last scraps of his clothing, but just left him like he was.

She cradled his head in her arms, holding it above the water while she waited for Ludo. As soon as the orange giant had arrived, she ordered him to make sure Jareth didn't drown and to clean him as best he could. Then Sarah rushed off to the mirror, whereupon she called on Sir Didymus, explained the circumstances, and left him to go sort out the matter of Jareth's cleanliness. Next she went to her bedroom, which had overgone a drastic change from cluttered with junk to clean and orderly, and grabbed every single blanket she could lay her hands on. She piled it all on the bed, creating a nest even the most industrial of birds would have been proud of. Finally, she flitted to her father's cupboard and searched for some replacement clothes for Jareth.

Unfortunatley, the King was far, far leaner then Robert, and much taller. Sarah sighed in exasperation and returned to her own closet. She discovered some dark blue pajama bottoms of her own that _might _fit him, and a t-shirt. The t-shirt would be a little baggy on him, yes, but Sarah couldn't help the fact he didn't have a big belly like her father or a feminine chest like herself.

She ran to the bathroom and rapped on the door. It opened, silently, and she was confronted with the sad image of Ludo and Sir Didymus standing over the King. Didymus's sceptre was bloody.

Jareth wasn't moving.


	2. Epilouge

_**Forever Gone**_

She stood, silent, mourning, a black widow, on the rocky shore. A pebble of fire rested amid the dark waters, greasy flames reaching towards a sky black with death. Around her stood black figures of grief, pillars of flesh in the insubstaintual dreamworld of nightmares.

The funeral pyre burnt itself out, and the smell of incense used to burn his body drifted towards her.

She buried her face in her hands, The Queen of the Goblins, the Protector of the Labyrinth, and sobbed in despair. Despair and hate at the fox who'd killed her King, despair and hate at the bastard King himself-

Who burned, dead, his stiff, cold, pale body, his wraithlike hair, his wet, blue lips, his glassy, unseeing eyes. Gone, gone, gone, forever, forever...

How was she to rule? She did not even know the slightest thing of his world, and yet, here she was, Queen. Queen. Queen without a King. Queen of Grief.

But then her owl took flight, his cry echoing over the ashes of his pyre, and circled back to her, loving mismatched eyes fixed on her own.

At least she wouldn't have to do it alone.

_Forever, _Jareth whispered in her mind, _Is not long at all._


End file.
